Be Like Jesus

Dannah Gresh: The message of the Bible isn’t, “Try harder.” Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth reminds us that the message of the Bible is, “Jesus did what we could never do.”

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: The moment you realize you cannot do what God has called you to do, that is one of the greatest discoveries you'll ever make. That's the starting place to victory.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of The Quiet Place, for August 27, 2024. I’m Dannah Gresh.

For over three weeks we’ve been exploring the virtuous woman described in chapter 31 of Proverbs. We’ve talked about a lot of important topics, and we’ve discovered many ways we can walk in wisdom. Today, Nancy will wrap up the series by reminding us that ultimately we can’t be like this woman, but we can be like Jesus. Nancy starts out by talking about this woman’s appearance.

Nancy: Do you ever wonder what the virtuous woman looked like? Do you have a picture of her in your mind? I think if we think about it, we all probably have this image of a woman who is physically beautiful. And she may have been.

But you know what, we don't know. In fact ,what we are really talking about here is not necessarily one particular woman but a woman who personifies and embodies the combination of traits and character qualities of what it means to be a woman who walks with God. And I think that is why there is nothing in Proverbs 31 that tells us what this woman looked like.

There is nothing that describes her physical characteristics. We don't know if she is tall or short. We don't know if she is narrow or wide. We don't know what she looked like.

She may have been, you know, a woman who would be on a cover of a magazine. But I kind of doubt it because there are very, very few women who look that way. And there are none who look that way without a lot of work and a lot of help and maybe some computer changes as well.

So this is not a woman who is known for her physical characteristics and beauty. What she is known for is an inner beauty that the world can't give you, and you can't picture on the front of a magazine.

So in all of this passage, Proverbs 31, that we've been studying over the past few weeks her physical appearance, the appearance of this virtuous woman is never mentioned. Her attractiveness and her beauty come completely from her heart and her character.

So we come to verse 30 today, which does talk about the matter of beauty. But it doesn't talk about it in the way that the world talks about beauty.

Proverbs chapter 31, verse 30. "Charm is deceitful." I looked up that word deceitful in one of my reference books and some of the synonyms are: "It's a sham," "It's a fraud," "It's worthless," "It's misleading."

Charm by itself without godly character is a sham. It is a fraud. It is just a front. It's a cover up. It reminds me of that verse in Proverbs that says, "As a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman who is without discretion" (11:22).

She is a sham. She has physical charm; an outward form of beauty. But it is a fraud. It is not the real thing. Because she's got the outward beauty, it is like putting a piece of jewelry on a pig's snout. It's still a pig. No matter what the cover up looks like, inside it is still a pig. And no matter what you do to woman who is outwardly beautiful if inside she has the heart of a pig, then she is not truly beautiful.

"Charm is deceitful, the passage says and beauty is passing." Speaking of that external beauty, it doesn't last. And if you are over forty you know that for sure. I try in the morning and by this time of the day, I am feeling disheveled and it passes—it doesn't even last, if you can get it first thing in the morning, you can't make it last all day.

I mean how much hair spray and make up and it passes, and it certainly passes with the passing of years. That is outward beauty. External beauty. But the woman who fears the Lord she shall be praised.

There is a contrast there. Do you see it? Charm. Outward form. Outward beauty. Charm is deceitful. Beauty is passing. But . . . That's the contrast. "But a woman who fears the Lord." That says to me that you can be a woman who has a reverential relationship with God and not necessarily have external beauty.

So given the choice, which matters more to you? You say, "I want them both." Well, that's what the world tells us. But you know if you put the focus on getting the external beauty, you are putting your investment in something that can't last, in something that in and of itself is not particularly meaningful.

Now, God made beauty. There is nothing sinful about being beautiful. There is nothing sinful as a woman about dressing yourself in a way that would be attractive to your husband.

But keep in mind if that is where you put your focus, you are investing in something that doesn't last. And no matter how well you succeed at this external beauty thing, if you haven't been working at the heart, the attitudes, the spirit, the character, you are a loser.

A woman who fears the Lord, now that woman, she has something that is lasting, something that is true, something that is of great value. It won't pass away.

I think this verse; the second part of this verse is the key to this whole chapter. "A woman who fears the Lord." Do you remember, by the way, where the Book of Proverbs began?

We are in the last chapter of Proverbs,chapter 31. Do you remember what Proverbs chapter 1, verse 7 tells us? "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." It's the starting place.

Proverbs is the book about wisdom—how to live life wisely, how to look at all of life in God's perspective, how to deal with every practical aspect of life in a wise way. Where does it start? With the fear of the Lord.

You want to know how to raise your children? You want to know how to love that difficult husband? You want to know how to order your priorities? You want to know how to deal with health issues? You want to know how to deal with money? You want to know how to deal with friendships? You want to know how to deal with sinful habits? You want to know how to develop good habits? Proverbs talks about them all. But where does it all start? With the fear of the Lord.

If you are not a woman who fears the Lord then ultimately your efforts to be a godly woman are going to be like someone who takes a stick, puts it in the ground and takes fruit, say peaches, and sticks those peaches on that tree and says, "There I have a peach tree."

You don't have a peach tree. You have a stick in the ground with some peaches on it. And some of us as Christian women are kind of like that stick in the ground with some Christian behaviors stuck on.

You see, if you don't have a relationship with God that is a truly spiritual, vital, growing relationship, if your roots aren't in a relationship with God and you don't have the love of God and the reverence of God coursing through your veins, then the fruit that comes out is not going to be spiritual fruit.

Once you develop the fear of the Lord in your life, you will find it is not so hard to bear fruit. It comes, well, I don't want to say naturally, it comes supernaturally.

The fruit will be there if you are taking care of the roots in your relationship with God. Here is a woman who fears the Lord. Does that mean she is afraid of God? Well, in a sense we should be afraid of God.

The fear of the Lord means to have a reverential trust in God, to reverence God—not to take His name in vain; not to take Him lightly; but to have this reverence, this awe of God and with that comes a hatred of evil. It's a reverential trust with the hatred of evil.

To love God is to hate all that God hates. So that is what we mean by a woman who fears the Lord. This is a woman who lives in the constant conscious awareness of God's presence. She lives every moment of her life, every aspect of her life with the consciousness that God is here, that the eyes of the Lord are in every place beholding the evil and the good.

I think about how many things in my life would be different if I lived all the time in the fear of the Lord, the consciousness of His presence. How many things I wouldn't say. Places I wouldn't go. Things I wouldn't do. Things I wouldn't eat, if I were eating and living and walking and living in the conscious awareness of God's presence.

If you want to become a woman of virtue, develop a sense of the fear of the Lord.

Now you can't develop that apart from spending time with God in His Word. His Word will help you to develop that reverence for Him, that awe toward Him, that trust in Him and that hatred of evil. And then everything about your life will be ordered around that consciousness of God's presence.

Physical charm, physical beauty, those things are an illusion. They are fleeting. They are momentary. They can lure, but they can't last. The thing that lasts is a relationship with God. That's got to be the number one focus and priority of your life and mine if we are to be the women God made us to be.

Now there is a passage in the Old Testament, Isaiah chapter 3, that gives us a contrast, a different kind of woman. It's a picture of women who focus on external beauty rather than on the fear of the Lord. I just want to read this passage to give us a contrast.

We've seen the picture of the woman who fears the Lord and how she's truly beautiful. But in Isaiah chapter 3 beginning in verse 16, "The LORD says, "The women of Zion are haughty." That's the inward, the heart. They're proud. That's their heart attitude and remember that invariably whatever is in your heart is what is going to come out in your external behavior and appearance.

We're going to deal with people outwardly. We'll deal with people outwardly with ways that reflect our inward heart. The woman who fears the Lord in her heart, she'll have a certain kind of demeanor and beauty about her. This is talk about now a different kind of woman, women with haughty hearts.

The Scripture says that they walk "along with outstretched necks, flirting with their eyes, tripping along with mincing steps, with ornaments jingling on their ankles. Therefore the Lord will bring sores on the heads of the women of Zion; the LORD will make their scalps bald."

What is he saying? Beauty, of that external, worldly type is fading. It doesn't last, and the Lord can take it away as quickly as you got it.

Verse 18, "In that day the Lord will snatch away their finery: the bangles and headbands and crescent necklaces, the earrings and bracelets and veils, the headdresses and ankle chains and sashes, the perfume bottles and charms, the signet rings and nose rings, the fine robes and the capes and cloaks, the purses and mirrors, and the linen garments and tiaras and shawls." Does that sound kind of modern?

Now not all those things are inherently wrong. Is it wrong to wear earrings and bracelets or sashes or to have perfume bottles? It's not saying that those things are wrong, but it's talking about the kind of women that have the kind of heart that is preoccupied with the external, with physical beauty.

Scripture says if that's your focus that's coming out of a haughty heart rather than a heart that fears the Lord, you are going to be a loser. God is going to snatch it away; it's not going to last.

Verse 24, I am still in Isaiah 3, "Instead of fragrance," this is a very graphic passage, "Instead of fragrance, there will be a stench; instead of a sash, a rope; instead of well-dressed hair, baldness; instead of fine clothing, sackcloth; instead of beauty, branding."

Now I don't think that is talking about just the physical. I don't think it's saying that all ungodly women will one day go bald. That's not the point.

The point is, if you have focused on the external and your external is influenced by a haughty or proud heart, one day all the things you thought were so beautiful and precious and worthwhile are going to be taken away from you and you're going to have nothing to show for a lifetime of effort. 

Now, I want to take a little parenthesis in this session before we come to the very last verse and talk about how we respond to a passage like Proverbs 31.

What I'm going to say here actually could apply to any passage that you read in God's Word that is challenging, it's convicting, it sets a standard that is beyond what we can do naturally.

I found today as I was in the Scripture in another passage that God spoke to my heart about a particular matter. There was this conviction that my life did not measure up to the standard of what I was reading.

Conviction is uncomfortable. I can't say that I love conviction. I'm a kind of performer, and I want to meet the standard. I don't like to see that I have failed to meet the standard.

But that's what I saw this morning. "You don't measure up." That's the Holy Spirit in me doing part of what His job is. That is to show me where I don't measure up to God's plan and God's purposes.

When God convicts us, there are different responses that we can have. I want to put them in three categories and relate them to Proverbs 31. Then you can apply them perhaps to other areas where God may be speaking to you.

The first response . . . and often this is the case with Proverbs 31, the virtuous woman who has all these qualities of godliness, she's such an incredible picture of what it means to be a woman of God. The first thing we can do when we see that picture is to reject it. I have to say that this is what most of the world and many people even in the church have done with this picture.

I'm assuming that the fact that you are here listening to this series on Proverbs 31 means that you are not prepared to reject this picture. If you have rejected it, let me say that's a losing battle because if you are a child of God ultimately this is the plan God has for your life.

Here's a second trap many of us do fall into. We don't outright reject the picture. What we do is say, "I'm going to be like that woman if it kills me." We begin to try to perform, to strive, and to struggle and say, "Oh, I want to be a good Christian; I want to be a godly woman." Let me say that the moment you come to realize that you cannot do what God has called you to do by yourself, that is one of the greatest discoveries you'll ever make. That's the starting place to victory.

But when we strive and we struggle, that's really a picture of going to Mount Sinai. Do you remember what happened at Mount Sinai in the Book of Exodus? That's where God gave what? The Law.

God said, "You are not going to be able to keep it."

But the people said, "No, we will keep the Law."

Do you know what the rest of the Old Testament is about? It's just proving that they couldn't keep the Law, that God was right. The Law was given knowing that we couldn't keep it, but it was given to show us that we couldn't keep it, that we could not live up to God's standard.

The purpose of the Law is so that we will come to see ourselves as failures (the old-fashioned word for that is "sinners") so that we can be pointed to Christ who alone can fulfill the Law.

Christ is the only person who has ever lived who was able to fulfill the righteousness of God's Law. The purpose of the Law is to bring us to Christ to help us to see our helpless condition.

The purpose of Proverbs 31 is not to make us leave this place and say, "I am going to be a godly woman. I know I can do it. I know I can do it" and then by 10:00 in the morning we have blown it.

The purpose of this picture in part is to help us see that we cannot live up to it, that we cannot measure up to it. It's a great day when we come into the presence of the Lord and we say "Lord, I cannot be the woman that You want me to be. I can't."

Paul said in the New Testament in the Book of Romans, "I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) there dwells no good thing" (7:18). I cannot be that person on my own.

So you can reject the picture or you can struggle and strive to perform. You can go to Mount Sinai and live there and gut it out and grit your teeth and say, "I am going to be this woman" but you'll get exhausted in the effort. By the way you will wear other people out in the effort too. You will be an uptight Christian.

Here's the third alternative. Not Mount Sinai, but Mount Calvary. Go to the place where you get God's grace. Go to Calvary and say, "Lord I cannot be this woman. But I know that You live in me and 'it's not I that live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life which I now live, I live not on my own but by the power of Christ who lives in me'" (Gal. 2:20).

So, Lord, would You be in me what I can never be apart from You? It's a life of faith. It's a life of dependence, not of striving or struggling but of saying, "I can't do this. But, Jesus, would You be Jesus in me?"

"I can't love that husband. I can't love those children. I can't have that diligent, hardworking, industrious spirit. I am going to get worn out in this effort. I can't speak words that are kind and wise all the time. Left to myself, Lord, I'm going to be one unpleasant person to live with. But, Lord, I know that You are living in me and You can do this in me and through me. And by faith I want to let You live that life. Fill me with Your Holy Spirit and be in me and through me what I could never be."

This is what it means to believe and to receive and to live the gospel. The gospel isn't just something you needed when you got saved twenty-three years ago. The gospel is something I need today to live as a woman of God.

It's the sufficiency of Christ's sacrifice on the cross for me. It means that it is finished. I don't have to strive. I don't have to struggle. You have paid the price for my sin. He now lives in me to fulfill the righteousness of His Law. So this passage is a call as is the whole Word of God to walk in dependence upon the power of the Holy Spirit.

You say, "Does that mean I won't ever blow it again?" No, because we are so prone to go back to Mount Sinai and try to do it on our own or to reject the picture, but when you find yourself having rejected God's Law, or you find yourself back in that cycle of trying to strive and perform, just stop.

Get quiet before the Lord and say, "Lord, I'm so sorry. I repent of trying to do this on my own." It's just as sinful to try and do it on your own as it is to reject the picture because either way you are doing it apart from Christ. Whatever is not of faith is sin.

So, Lord, I pray that You would work in our hearts the righteousness of Christ. May we be women who receive and believe the gospel and who walk in dependence on You.

Lord, we can't live this life apart from You. Thank You that You have given us Your Holy Spirit who lives within us to fulfill the righteousness of that Law. Lord, help us to walk by faith leaning on You, looking to You, waiting on You, and letting You be Jesus in us.

Oh, Lord, may we live at Calvary. May we live as women of grace and would You by the power of Your spirit make us, mold us, shape us and conform us into the women that You made us to be. For Jesus' sake I pray it, amen.

Dannah: That’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth wrapping up her teaching in Proverbs 31. She’s been reminding us that in our own strength, we can never be like the virtuous woman described in Proverbs 31. That’s why we need the perfect righteousness of Jesus.

There’s one more verse in Proverbs 31 we’d like to address. Verse 31 says: “Give her the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in the gates.”

Throughout this series we have heard from women and men, children and husbands, all rising up in gratitude for the virtuous women in their lives, letting these guests offer praise in the gates so to speak. We want to end with one final tribute from our friend Suzanne Dudgeon.

Suzanne Dudgeon: I tell you, every verse reminds me of my mother, but verse 12, where it says, "She does him good all the days of her life, and not evil," my mom certainly was that to Dad. Dad passed away about two years ago. She would just travel to the nursing home, drive her little car about five miles away, and visit him every day.

When I was a little girl, my dad was more interested in coon hunting and fishing. She just stuck by his side and allowed him to be who he wanted to be, and she just patiently waited. When he was sixty-five years old, my dad had fallen from the top of the barn—forty feet high. When I got to talk to him I said, "Dad, certainly you cried out to the Lord when you fell those forty feet!"

He says, "What would I done that for?" He still was not going to church. She waited a long time. So a year later, about to the day, my mom needed surgery. He was so concerned he was going to lose her, that's when he prayed to receive Christ. I wasn't there at the time of her surgery, but my two sisters were. When they got the good report that all was okay, they said, "Let's go eat Dad."

And he says, "Well, don't we need to go to the chapel first and thank God?"

Dannah: Oh, I love hearing stories like that. As we wrap up this series on Proverbs 31, would you thank an important woman in your life? Is there someone who has modeled the kind of virtuous womanhood we’ve been studying in this chapter. Would you thank her for that example?

With God’s help, you can be that kind of woman too. Nancy talks about this whole concept more in her booklet Biblical Portrait of Womanhood: Discovering and Living Out God’s Plan for Our Lives. You were made to glorify God, and you can do that by delighting in who He made you to be as a woman. We would love to send you a copy of this resource when you donate any amount to Revive Our Hearts.

Or, with your gift of $50 or more, you can get this booklet along with The True Woman by Susan Hunt, and the Marks of a True Woman bookmark. It’s all part of the True Woman Bundle, which is our way of thanking you for supporting this ministry. Request your resources when you give online at ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959.

Tomorrow Nancy will be here to share one of her classic messages on singleness—but most importantly, contentment, no matter what season of life you’re in. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

All Scripture is taken from the NKJV unless otherwise noted.

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